Fourrure, vitrine, photographie

In 2015-2016, the CPIF and FRAC Haute-Normandie joined forces to organise a retrospective devoted to Gilles Saussier.

For the second part of this exhibition at the CPIF, Gilles Saussier has invited Stéphanie Solinas to take part in a dialogue around identity and how photography both constructs and deconstructs this notion.

When you compare extracts from their major photographic and publishing projects - Sans titre. M. Bertillon, Déserteurs and Dominique Lambert for Stéphanie Solinas; Le Tableau de Chasse, Spolia and Studio Shakhari Bazar for Gilles Saussier – it is obvious that both of these photographers broach the question of identity. For them identity is not a given asset, not something that has been interiorised, or whose permanence is ensured by photography. Identity is seen as a process open to otherness in which each person reinvents and reconstructs themselves to become multiple and infinitely mobile.

This external rather than internal form of identity is developed in a joint work, an autobiographical and photographic ‘exquisite corpse’ entitled Fourrure, vitrine, photographie, created specifically for this exhibition by Stéphanie Solinas and Gilles Saussier.